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barry brusso
capacitor is a simple
device. It is basically
just two conductors
sandwiched with an
insulator between them.
Engineers know the basic laws of
physics: capacitance (the amount of
charge) increases directly with the area
of the conductors (plates), inversely
with their distance apart, and directly
with the dielectric constant of the
insulation. Given a moment to think,
engineers remember that the dielectric
constant of air is one and that of pure
water is 81. How did they find this
out? The fascinating story goes back
over two centuries.
The first capacitor in history was
built in October 1745 by Ewald
Georg von Kleist of Pomerania in
Germany. Around the same time, it is
claimed that a Dutch physicist, Pieter
van Musschenbroek from the University of Leiden, independently constructed a capacitor (Figure 1). The
latter formed his capacitor in a glass
container, which he called a Leyden
jar after the university with which he
was affiliated. It consisted of a glass
jar with a narrow neck partially filled
with water and wrapped outside and
inside with a thin metal foil. The
outer foil was connected to the
ground, and the inside foil was connected by a lead through a cork in the
neck of the jar to a source of electricity like a high-voltage electrostatic
generator. Von Kleist, after charging
the jar and disconnecting the electrostatic generator, got a shock by touchDigital Object Identifier 10.1109/MIAS.2014.2342592
Date of publication: 8 October 2014
1
An artist's depiction of an assistant in the lab of Pieter van Muschenbroek
attempting to condense electricity in a glass jar. On the right is an electrostatic
machine. Later, foil coatings were put on the inside and outside of the jar. (Image
courtesy of Wikimedia.)
1077-2618/142014IEEE
Now...
here are a few pioneers in the manufacturing of capacitors like Digambar Madhav Tagare (Figure S1), who, in 1950, founded and became the
managing director of Madhav Capacitors Pvt. Ltd. in Pune, Maharashtra,
India, and the late Myron Zucker (Figure S2) of Myron Zucker Inc. in the United States. They were both associated with the IEEE Industry Applications
Society. Another pioneer in capacitor manufacturing was Robert C.
Sprague. By the mid-1930s, capacitors sold under the brand name Sprague
became the standard for use in radios. Tantalum capacitors, which are a
fraction of the size of other capacitors, were invented by his company.
Tagare, who served his apprenticeship with RCA in Camden, New Jersey, returned to Mumbai, India, and was responsible for bringing capacitor manufacturing to his native country. He was awarded with the title
Father of Capacitor Industries in India by the Indian Electrical and Electronics Manufacturers Association in 2002. He is 90 years old at the time of
writing and in 2011 published the book Electricity Power Gen: The Changing Dimensions, an IEEE Press book on power engineering. In 2005, he
published another book, Electrical Power Capacitors: Design and Manufacturing, a Tata McGraw-Hill publication.
Zucker, who spent his early career in the 1940s working for Sprague
Power Factor Correction Capacitor Company, left and founded his own
company in 1950, The Zucker Engineering Co, known today as Myron Zucker, Inc. in Michigan. He was affectionately nicknamed Mr. Capacitor-USA.
In 1990, the IEEE Industry Applications Society established The Myron Zucker
Student Design Contest in his name, supported by a generous endowment.
Tagare, recalling the history of capacitors, reminisces [2] that in the
1950s, testing methods were primitive. One applied an almost breakdown
voltage to a capacitor; if it survived, it passed, or else it failed.
10
S1
Digambar Madhav
Tagare.
S2
Myron Zucker.
Once the basic concepts were generally understood, questions about choices of materials and configurations
came into the forefront, the familiar
application issues. In 1876, D.G.
Fitzgerald, looking for improvements
in electrical condensers or accumula-
Ceramics have been used as dielectrics in capacitors. The Leyden jar was a
ceramic capacitor. Mica, porcelain, steatite, and titanium dioxide were used
as dielectric materials in capacitors. A
breakthrough occurred in the 1940s,
when barium titanate was put in capacitors as a dielectric. Its dielectric value
is nearly ten times higher than the
other dielectrics in use at that time.
The next milestone in capacitor
technology occurred about 40 years
ago, when barium titanate multilayer
dielectric capacitors were made.
Detailed information is available in
[1]. By 1930, the demand increased
by leaps and bounds with the rapid
spread of radio broadcasting.
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[1] J. Ho, S. Boggs Jr, and T. R. Jow, Historical introduction to capacitor technology,
IEEE Electr. Insul. Mag., vol. 26, pp. 2025,
Jan./Feb. 2010.
[2] D. M. Tagare, Electrical Power Capacitors.
New York: Tata McGraw-Hill, 2005.
[3] R. Natarajan, Power System Capacitors. Boca
Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2005.
[4] J. Miller, Introduction to electrochemical
capacitor technology, IEEE Electr. Insul.
Mag., vol. 26, pp. 4047, July/Aug. 2010.
IAS